Brazilian Indians protest against dams

1st July 2010
Enawene Nawe Indi­ans in Brazil are demon­strat­ing against a series of hydro­elec­tric dams which are killing the fish they rely on.

Three hun­dred Indi­ans have gath­ered in the town of Sapezal in the Ama­zon state of Mato Grosso, armed with bows and arrows to protest against the dam project.

Sur­vival Inter­na­tion­al is call­ing for the Enawene Nawe’s rights to their land to be upheld.

Unlike most tribes in the Ama­zon, the Enawene Nawe do not eat meat, so fish are essen­tial to their diet.

A total of 77 small hydro­elec­tric dams are planned for the Juru­e­na Riv­er, upstream of the tribe’s land. Five are already under con­struc­tion.

The Enawene Nawe were not con­sult­ed about the project, and they say that since work start­ed the Juru­e­na and its trib­u­taries have become pol­lut­ed.

Dur­ing the protests the Enawene Nawe have met with the Brazil­ian author­i­ties to reit­er­ate their oppo­si­tion to the dams. They are also demand­ing a full, inde­pen­dent envi­ron­men­tal impact study.

Every year the Enawene Nawe per­form yãk­wa, an impor­tant rit­u­al in which they build intri­cate dams across the small­er rivers and trap fish in large bas­kets.

The fish are smoked and trans­port­ed back to the vil­lage, where some are offered to the yakair­i­ti spir­its of the under­world in elab­o­rate cer­e­monies.

This year and last year the Indi­ans caught almost no fish, a dis­as­ter for the tribe, who rely on fish as their main source of pro­tein.

In 2008 the Enawene Nawe occu­pied one of the dam con­struc­tion sites and destroyed much of the equip­ment on the site.